FRITZ! GmbH, the Berlin company formerly known as AVM, announced on 2 November 2026 that its FRITZ!Smart Energy 201 smart plug is now in shops. The recommended retail price is €49. It is an indoor plug, small enough to fit into a power strip, with a single combined LED and button.
What it does
The relay switches up to 16 A, or 3,680 W, so it can handle a heater, a washing machine or a kettle. FRITZ! puts standby consumption at under 0.2 W. The plug measures energy use and keeps a history, which shows up in the FRITZ!Box interface and in the FRITZ!App Smart Home. Through MyFRITZ!Net you can also compare consumption across several plugs.
The FRITZ!Box handles the automations. The plug can follow schedules or react to consumption, for example to cut power when a device drops into standby. While you are on holiday it can switch at random to make the home look occupied. Zones set up in the FRITZ!App Smart Home let it turn on or off when someone enters or leaves an area.
It needs a FRITZ!Box
The plug does not connect to Wi-Fi. It talks DECT, encrypted out of the box, to a FRITZ!Box, the same radio the router uses for cordless phones. In practice that means you need a FRITZ!Box with a DECT base station, or the FRITZ!Smart Gateway. DECT in Europe runs at 1.9 GHz, away from crowded 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, and the plug does not take an IP address on the home network. FRITZ! also points out that an older FRITZ!Box can be kept as a smart home hub.
Matter support comes with the same condition. The plug is not a Matter device itself. Apple Home, Google Home and Alexa can control it only through the Matter bridge in the FRITZ!Box 5690 Pro or in the FRITZ!Smart Gateway. The press release names only those two devices, so with any other FRITZ!Box the plug stays in the FRITZ! app and router interface.
Who it is for
For someone who already has a FRITZ!Box with DECT, this is a simple way to add switched and metered sockets without another hub. At €49 it costs more than many Wi-Fi or Zigbee plugs with energy monitoring, so for a Home Assistant setup built on Zigbee or Matter over Thread, cheaper options exist. Home Assistant does have a FRITZ!SmartHome integration that talks to DECT devices through the FRITZ!Box, which is another way in without the Matter bridge.